CORE B PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT Consistent with the Overall aims of the PPG, the Genomics, Biostatistics and Bioinformatics core (Core B) will play a central role focused on robust identification and prioritization of candidate genes, pathways and gene signatures in order to elucidate how HCMV encoded genes regulate cellular signaling in HPCs to contribute to the establishment and maintenance of viral latency as well as hematopoiesis. Core B will support all five projects and will provide biostatistics and bioinformatics assistance, as well as critical expertise and standardization in sample and library preparation and initial confirmation to aid in prioritization of targets. Core B is responsible for the pre-processing, integration and modeling of the diverse readouts (e.g., transcriptomics, phosphoproteomics, secretomics etc.) generated by each project as well as across projects within the PPG. These data will be incorporated into probabilistic pathway models to provide a rigorous and reproducible framework for hypothesis testing. Follow-up validation and perturbation experiments will aid in the evaluation and refinement of the modeling in an iterative manner. To ensure the data from all PPG research projects will be generated in a standardized manner, the GBBC will play a critical role in facilitating PPG studies, managing and integrating the diverse experimental read-outs, assessing reproducibility and guiding identification of the most promising candidates for validation. The GBBC will regulate consistency and quality of the samples to be sequenced by performing both CD34+ HPC infection experiments with virus mutants generated by the different projects, and subsequent RNA isolations for RNA-seq to allow for cross-comparisons of datasets. This core will assist in prioritization of candidates for further perturbation and validation studies. Finally, the GBBC will provide bioinformatics and biostatistics support for PPG components throughout the ?data life cycle? including assistance with experimental design, data pre-processing, QA/QC, analysis, modeling and visualization as well as data integration, storage, management, standards and dissemination for all data types utilized in the PPG.